What, what, what.

What had happened?

What had gone differently?

What had he done there?

It drove him mad.

Had he succeeded?

Had he kept Breakdown alive, Optimus alive, all of them safe? Had he given the other a chance to show him what sort of person he was without Knock Out?

He could think up a thousand stories of what went down. Most of them were successes, some of them were brilliant victories, and a few ended absolutely horribly.

What the likelihood of each one happening was...he didn't know. For all he knew, that splinter version of himself had gotten everyone killed. Or maybe he had won. Maybe everything happening here had been avoided there.

It was eating him alive.


You won't get to see the world that copy makes for himself.

Brainstorm couldn't be said to haven't had warned him. There'd been plenty that came before (although they only came on those rare occassions the scientist was sobered away from the thrill of creating his contraption) and plenty more came after. Maybe it was because, before, Brainstorm had been busy working full cycles at once on the machine. When it was done, he had none of that distraction for himself. He had only the facts and the facts were that Knock Out was not doing better after going through the experience.

The warnings moved to 'I told you so's- because of course they did; that was the type of guy he was trapped with here.

I told you not to think about it, being the chief of which got said to him while he moped around the base.

Eventually, Knock Out just snapped at those.

"I have nothing else to do but wonder!" the medic interrupted one of Brainstorm's comments on why he should stop. "We do nothing but sit on this stupid rock; what else am I supposed to think about? I could be out preventing this mess from getting me to the place I'm stuck at now- I'm allowed to hope that I have, aren't I?"

But it wasn't healthy to. He knew it. Brainstorm knew it. Neither were idiots, even if neither were very smart in terms of interpersonal relations.

"Aren't I?" Knock Out repeated, quieter. "It's enough to know that I possibly could've avoided some of those regrets, but I'm still going to wonder how that possibility played out."

He really did expect something from that. He expected a reaction that could help encourage him, just something- maybe an 'I know', a reassurement that they'd been through similar problems? it was obvious Brainstorm had some sort of regret buried in inaction sometime in the past-

but nothing like that came. He supposed neither of them were sappy enough for it. They were able to reach the halfway point, but never could tip over that into being real, caring people.

Brainstorm left the room. Knock Out reorganized everything in spite. They didn't run across each other for a few cycles.

Then the medic was blearily refueling in their old shared dispensary room (he hadn't forced the other to come refuel; not when they were being spiteful with each other) when the scientist had walked in. He made his way over, slammed a device down on the table besides where the exhausted mech was still trying to peel his head up, and then stood there waiting.

Fragging waiting.

Like anyone would, Knock Out rose to the bait.

"Whasat?" he mumbled.

With his mask on, it was hard to tell what flavor of expression Brainstorm was glaring down at him with. If he were to wager a guess, it was landing somewhere between wildly irritated and piqued interest at his opening for a spiel on his latest invention.

"Let me guess," Knock Out pulled his head up from the tabletop slowly. "It's a-"

His mind scrambled for some sort of, as the fleshies from Earth would've said, 'bs'.

"-quantum-"

The word was tossed around enough by the mad sciency type to feel like a safe bet.

"...energon...frier?"

For a moment, Brainstorm seemed distracted enough by his slag.

"A-hmm, would that...But no," the scientist shook his head and jabbed a finger onto the thing. "It's a communication device. It should reach just about any autobot you have the life signal recorded for and it shouldn't go over enough channels to draw attention."

Wait. Knock Out crunched his face up.

"What?" he asked.

As if talking to an idiot, Brainstorm slowed his speech down to a patronizing tone.

"It means you can get in touch with all those people you're wondering about. Well, the non-dead ones."

There was a shrug.

"I couldn't quite figure out how to include them."

A communicator. A long range, private communicator. Knock Out reached for the device and took it into his servo.

"I-...I thought you tried not to send many messages out," he said. "Besides the one alerting others to the safe zone here. What's with..."

Brainstorm was already shifting like he wanted to leave. He was probably itching to get back to his lab, hang upside down, and overall be a maniac who had no idea what 'self care' meant.

There wasn't really anything said as reassurement or an apology for being an aft recently or anything he expected from sappy autobots.

That wasn't too insulting, he supposed. It was certainly a nice thought, regardless of what words introduced it or not.

Knock Out felt the device on his palm. It was a starting point.

Maybe the consciousness-misplacer had been a starting point for some other version of Knock Out.

But it was time for this version to find his own.


He didn't get anyone to respond. It was rather disappointing. He was pretty sure it defeated a good portion of the point, but it had still been a nice thought on Brainstorm's part.

That was that, he thought at first. He'd probably keep trying but he didn't seem as likely to get a response as he'd let himself hope.

Except that wasn't that.

The blue ship coming down to a landing atop the asteroid was proof of it.


The other was 'busy'. Knock Out had run into his lab, slipped around the corner, and yelled at Brainstorm to get up because there was a visitor outside.

"I'm busy!" he'd yelled from...the vents?

Fine then.

"If I die, you'd better wallow in guilt for not being there!" Knock Out had yelled back and then ran to retrieve his energon prod. There were long range weapons in this base as well. Did he really trust they wouldn't explode in his face or something similarly nasty? He left with only the prod in his servos.

The ship had already parked by the time he got out. There was a large autobot symbol on one side, but that didn't necessarily mean anything reassuring. It could be the autobots sent out from Cybertron as enforcers. It could be a decepticon trap.

But the two-wheeler standing outside the ship's ramp left far less room up for interpretation.

No way.

No fragging way.

"Arcee?" he looked on disbelievingly. It just seemed unlikely. She hadn't been heard from since she'd left Cybertron that one cycle; most figured she'd gone to Earth, but the council's interplanetary communication block prevented that from ever being confirmed.

"I-" the medic's expression betrayed his own confusion, but he walked towards her anyways. "I thought you were on Earth?"

She met him when he'd almost reached the ship.

"I was," she confirmed with a little smile. "I was dragged off a while ago, before I even got your message."

But-

But-

Oh, to the Pit with it.

Knock Out laughed. It was a sound of relief and excitement and nostalgia and hope and-

"Hey-hey-wait!" the laugh broke off into a yelp when she hugged him. "Watch the finish!"

This time, it was the two-wheeler's turn to laugh.

"Shut up, you," she teased and did not, in fact, break off the embrace in order to better protect his finish.

As nice as that was, he had questions still. After a bit, he finally poked her and peeled away.

"You got my message?" he asked, before shaking his head. "Wait, more importantly: who dragged you away from Earth?"

A few explanations would be rather nice.

"As odd as it is, Wheeljack," Arcee answered. "Apparently, he'd been wandering around ever since leaving Cybertron-"

More than just wandering, last Knock Out had checked. It was rather relieving just to find out he wasn't dead from self-destruction one way or the other.

"-and ran into Ultra Magnus out there-"

"Ultra Magnus?" he asked. The mech shuffled above the ramp before walking down as if summoned by his question. Knock Out went to attention, just like Magnus always liked autobots to do.

The former commander paused to take him in beforing offering a nod.

"At ease, soldier."

There was nothing like the bland, boring, unimportant greeting style and dismissal of Magnus. It meant he saw a soldier and not an enemy. Red optics and claws or not, he was a teammate in Magnus's optics.

It meant far more than it really should've.

"Anyway," Arcee smirked. "They wandered a bit out there before they got a few encoded transmissions of interest."

Those wouldn't be his. He'd sent his messages out only a few cycles ago, not...well, whenever all this apparently happened.

"Knock Out." The snapping of digits in front of his face brought him back to the moment. When he looked back to show his attention was on her, Arcee continued bluntly. "Optimus is alive."


The rest of the story came out fast. While the trio aboard the Discount Iron Will (a title Wheeljack had laughed at while Magnus had protested in flat frustration) hadn't talked directly to Optimus yet, the Prime had apparently been sending his top lieutenants encoded messages. They said he was alive. They said he was working on something. They said he needed help.

The council was rotten. That came to no surprise for Knock Out.

The council needed to be dealt with. Also not a surprise.

Optimus was attempting to organize a covert revolution.

Now that?

That involved apparent resurrection, for one thing, and he'd never have been able to guess it would happen.

Magnus was planning on helping. Wheeljack had a goal now and that would keep him focused until it could be met. Arcee wanted to see Optimus again and joining his resistance would let her do that.

Cybertron wasn't their destination. The planet had other large outposts used to shield the world from approach and block radio signals. They were hoping to disable one of those. Knock Out had been on the way.

Actually, he'd been a little out of the way. But Brainstorm's device had let him speak through one-sided messages to all three of these bots and Wheeljack had been the one to send this safe-zones coordinates to him in the first place.

They'd come for him.

It didn't matter if Breakdown had died or Optimus had given his life up or he'd been hostile until the very end of the war. It didn't matter what some other version of himself had managed to do or not do. His autobots in here had come for him.

They refueled the Discount Iron Will on the asteroid while Knock Out had toured Wheeljack and Arcee around the place he'd been stuck in for orns. The wrecker had looked suitably disturbed to see the state of the place he'd sent Knock Out to (it was an act, but it was funny and he approved of it). Arcee had smirked at the two of them bantering back and forth.

He left them in the main dispensary after showing them nearly everywhere (Brainstorm's current lab and the room with the consciousness-misplacer were those he did not take the others into) and tracked down the scientist where he was working now.

"Guess who's here?" Knock Out leaned against the wall after entering and talked on before bothering to wait for any guesses. "Some of my old team."

The details spilled out and he was rather shocked that it went without interruption until the end.

"Are you going to get down here-" he gestured at the upside-down seeker "-and come with me to meet them?"

Brainstorm continued to fiddle with the gun he was combining to another.

"Busy."

Ah, yes. 'Busy'. Knock Out frowned.

"Come on," he repeated with a bit more irritation. "Do you really want to rust on this rock or do you want a few new autobots to show your inventions off to?"

It really was a no-brainer.

As awkward as it was going to be to have to fight to out-talk this guy for even more cycles, it really was better they both leave this place behind them.

Time travel was an exciting thing and all. But wasting time wondering how regrets could be reworked and people could live that hadn't and failures could be avoided was just that: a waste.

They had a revolution to join.

A world to save (again).

A Prime to be reunited with.

He had all that.

So it shouldn't matter what he had somewhere else.